Jalapenos - 2

When I first started working on this photo I figured I'd have to just say that Jalapenos must grow slowly because it looked the same as before... but first I went and looked at my last jalapeno post and there was a good change in growth after all so YAY!

I still think the plant is growing slowly in comparison to other plants I have going but have read that the amount of peppers it gives is plentiful. And I have several jalapeno sprouts going to! At first, I was only going to put some jalapenos in salsa to can for the year... but since I had sprouts going I figured why not get all I can get and pickle them for the year too! Every little bit will save money ;) 

Several of these plants are going to be a little waiting game for me. I had to carefully move them around before the roots all tangled with one another so they'd have space to grow and so they'd be easy to transplant into their own pots later.

To save on money, I figured I'd use pots I already had to get things started. It didn't hit me until last night while watching a The Rusted Garden video that styrafoam cups would make the absolute best and cheapest pots ever until the plants were large enough to go into larger pots.

Live and learn and save money next year ;) lol 

Flowers - 2

It's been a little over a week since my last update. Living in Colorado, I knew it was inevitable but I was hoping this year would skip it anyways.

It snowed. First it got cold. Then it rained. Then it freakin' snowed. None of my plants were killed because we got them all inside when we noticed it getting a bit cooler than normal out... but I can't say they particularly enjoyed being on my kitchen table or in my window either :p

Todays' been the first nice day since the last time I took pictures so, naturally, I had to take pictures! First up are my flowers.

First up are my Sweet Pea flowers. I can't wait to see these beauties grow big and tall! They are doing really well and are fun to watch grow. There is one, it has no leaves and is just growing super tall. You can see it in the back. I also snuck in a seed or two of columbines so it will be fun to see if we get anything from that. I think this is just going to have to be our experimental flower pot haha 

Next up are my Dianthus! 

In my last post, I talked about how this flower pot was mostly my daughter's (she's four) and the seeds didn't get put in any special order, though we tried. This one mostly has the larger flowers and you'll see some smaller ones snuck throughout which are the third type of flower we put in the pot. They are almost like mini versions of the larger Dianthus :p

I'm sure this year, we planted the flowers way to close together and they are obviously mixed throughout but I think when they bloom we will have some truly gorgeous images to share!!! And hopefully we'll find out if we were right about what the smaller flower sprouts are. My guess is Zinnias but we will have to find out eventually! 

My next flower update will also include (hopefully) pictures of the flower pot I got started today which has our Columbines in it! 

Onion

The last thing I have to share today is my onion plants! See, my goal is to grow a garden that will give me the stuff for a salad fresh from the garden and salsa I am able to can and have all year. Couldn't do that last one without some onion!

I planted it before the garlic, so its a good bit bigger. All five have already popped up and seem to be doing really well :) Hopefully I don't end up needing to do any transplanting later on :p

Garlic

This post is particularly exciting because I tried to grow garlic last year. But I tried to grow them in the same pot as green onion. And they look basically the same as they grow and both were seeds. I have no idea which it actually was but this is definitely garlic because I'm growing it from cloves... which is apparently much easier than from seed :p

So far, we planted 5, have 2 doing well above the ground already and one that I'm unsure of. It seems to be a little weaker but it is growing. Hopefully the little guy pulls through. And hopefully the other two pop through before to long :p 

Jalapenos

This post won't show a whole lot... thought it has been the most stressful of what I have growing so far.

The packet said to get the jalapenos growing inside 8-10 weeks before the last frost (which was roughly 2 weeks ago when I planted them). My onion sets came up. Then my garlic came up. Then the flowers came up... but no Jalapeno spouts. I had been putting them outside because the weather here has been so nice! While we're in Colorado, the little town we recently moved to doesn't get near as cold as the cities we had formerly lived in and the temps were already up into the mid 60s and even the early 70s! Outside seemed like the perfect place for the pot to be.

But, the packet said inside and I should have listened (I was bringing them in at night but still). Well, I'd only planted a few seeds and gave the rest to my mother-in-law (MIL) so she could grow some as well. Figuring my seeds didn't take, I got another packet and figured I'd germinate a few inside. I had great success doing this with other plants last year and it was a safe bet.

Then... about 2-3 days ago I went outside, or rather my daughter did, and excitedly gasped that there was green in the otherwise, brown pot! Sure enough, there was a little jalapeno sprout. Since then, the other one has popped up too. Once they get a good bit larger, I'll transplant them into their own pots and have some jalapenos by the end of summer (I hope).

Flowers

Last year, I didn't really grow any flowers. I had a pot of geraniums that I had bought to keep mosquitos away, but other than that... flowers seemed like a waste of my time. That was a bit foolish of me! Particularly since I wasn't growing a large garden! I kept noticing that my strawberries would get flowers and the flowers would die, producing no fruit.

I looked up what could be causing it, learned about hand pollinating fixing the issue and started getting some strawberries... but I figure that having more flowers on the porch may make it a little easier on me ;) So, this year I'm growing several different varieties of flowers!

Pollination isn't the only thing I'm hoping these little flowers will do. My daughter (4) has been compeltely thrilled going out and watching the garden every day and seeing if anything new has come up. Oh, her excitement when the flowers first sprouted! Above, is I believe a Sweet Pea. We planted two different colors of them and they took nearly twice as long to sprout as the other two varieties of flowers we planted so we were very happy when we finally saw them sticking up out of the ground. - This picture was taken roughly 2.5 weeks after we first planted the seeds. 

This next picture shows the other two varieties, one of which I'm not entirely sure what it is because I lost the baggie of seeds... but I'm sure they'll be beautiful whatever they are :p 

I know that the smaller sprouts are Dianthus and I am pretty sure the larger sprouts are a type of Zinnia. Hopefully I find the bag and can confirm. Otherwise, we'll just wait till the grow into flowers and find out then!

When we originally positioned the flowers, the Sweet Peas were to be in the middle, as they would get the largest, then what I think are Zinnias would be around them ending with Dianthuas as they would be the smallest. Since my four year old was helping plant, they didn't get as perfectly situated as one might hope but I think all the colors and the final look will still be beautiful and I know my little girl will be super proud of herself because she's put a lot of work and time into growing these already!

Gardening - 2015

Last year, I didn't completely rock gardening. It isn't that I couldn't get anything to grow... because I did! It's just that by the time they started to grow it was late in the season and I didn't think there would be time for anything to actually produce, so I let it die off with the plans of doing it better next year (which is now - yay!).

I learned a lot last year. I learned that container gardening was the best option for what I wanted to do and where I lived. I learned about the fact that insects don't always magically show up and sometimes you have to hand pollinate... or you can do more to attract insects. I also learned that timing is very important.

That all has translated into what I hope will be a much more succesful garden this summer!

So far, I have my onion sets, garlic, jalapeno and a pot of three different flowers outside and growing in their containers. I have artichokes and more jalapenos germinating in baggies on my window seal and by the end of this month I'll have more flowers planted, the rest of my garden germinating or growing outside! I absolutely can't wait to see how this year goes :D

And, of course, I'll document it all with photos like I did last year :p